…is that they’re utterly barking mad!

It was the first of two Bank Holiday weekends in May. Saturday morning saw me driving up to Norfolk to collect Jack and take him to Nando’s Riverside before the Norwich City match against Aston Villa … which we lost, helping Chris Hughton’s masterplan to dominate the Championship next season rather than staying up in the Premier League.

A tasty post-match Chinese and then on to my hotel in Norwich for a late night.

Sunday morning should have seen me running a medium distance – 6-8 miles around Norwich – but I’d managed to pull my calf muscle yet again earlier in the week. Damnit! Less than 150 days until the Berlin Marathon as well. So I had a little lie-in instead and a light breakfast before heading off in the glorious sunshine to fetch Jack to head back into Norwich for more shopping and eating (Wagamama) before I headed back down to London to change and grab my running gear before heading off to GT’s for the evening and a lovely veggie meal.

No doubt reeking of garlic, we headed off early on Bank Holiday Monday up to Milton Keynes for GT to run in the MK Marathon; her tenth.

Yes, after the Paris Marathon when GT had got so close – again! – to her 4:00:00 barrier, one of her running mates had suggested she should get paced around in a sub-4 hour run and he happened to know the guy who’d be doing just that at Milton Keynes. So the die was cast. I’d suggested that I would drive GT there and back as usual, but with nothing to do otherwise, I entered the Superhero Fun Run and bought a Batman costume from eBay.

And so it was that on a very warm, sunny day, GT lined up for the marathon in her running gear and I lined up for mine dressed as Batman and dosed up on Ibuprofen for the extremely painful calf muscle. They held us on the start line for a while in the sun so as you can imagine it was a tad sweaty inside a black rubberised hood, bodysuit and cape! Plus my Garmin kept switching out of training mode, so when we finally got away, it took me a while to be able to start logging the run.

There’s something wonderful about running along making bat signs and having crowds cheering you on as well as high-fiving other Batmen on the return loop! And so it was that I became first Superhero back despite the muscle going again. I was so pleased to cross the finish line that I forgot to switch the Garmin off until after I’d received my medal. Ah well.

So some photos, then…

Milton Keynes Superhero Fun Run